This is Graham Powell, and I will also be posting reviews here. I have been a fan of short stories for longer than I care to remember. For years I preferred anthologies to novels, and during my science fiction phase I amassed about 50 of them in 5 years.
For the past ten or twelve years I've been reading mostly crime fiction. I've never been much of a fan of Alfred Hitchcock's or Ellery Queen's magazines. Instead I picked up reprint anthologies with titles like Tough Guys and Dangerous Dames, City Sleuths and Tough Guys, and Hard-Boiled.
So for me, the Internet has been a blessing as most of the zines have tended to be on the darker side. Which is funny because one of my big gripes is that so little crime fiction these days has the light touch of guys like Robert Leslie Bellem and Richard S. Prather. Where are the new comic characters, like John J. Malone or "Bail Bonds" Dodd?
This blog owes a big debt to Bob Tinsley, whose "The Short Of It" was the first site dedicated to reviews of short stories. Thanks, Bob!
If you like the site, don't be shy - let us hear about it. You can reach me day or night at boog@myboogpages.com.
1 comment:
Ah, I salivated at the sight of "Bail Bond" Dodd. I read one of the Dodd stories in a hard-boiled anthology, and I thought it was far better than Sally's in the Alley and Mouse in the Mountain. The one Shell Scott short story I've read was infinitely better than the three or so Shell Scott novels I tried to read which, except for brief passages, are unreadable.
What can I learn form this? Perhaps that humor and hard-boiled make such an uneasy pairing that anything beyond short-story length tends to unravel.
OK, but what about Ken Bruen and Jason Starr's excellent novel Bust?
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
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